Knowing God - His Immutability
Knowing God • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 14 viewsNotes
Transcript
Introduction:
Introduction:
We spent the last 13 weeks looking at the Names of God because they tell us who He is.
Now we will begin to consider the attributes of God because they tell us what He is like.
The attributes of God are His characteristics, they are the various aspects of his essence of nature.
When we speak about the attributes of God, we also refer to then as His perfections and we use that term because perfections specifies that the characteristics of God are each perfect and inherently characterize the God who is perfect.
A general definition of perfections is as follows:
Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth The Attributes (Perfections) of God
God’s perfections are the essential characteristics of his nature. Because these characteristics are necessary to his nature, all his attributes are absolutely perfect and thus rightly called perfections. Further, since these perfections are essential to God’s nature, if any one of them were denied, God would no longer be God.
As we begin to study the perfections of God, we must make a distinction between God’s communicable and His incommunicable attributes.
A communicable perfection is one that can be transferred from person to another.
You have, no doubt, heard about communicable diseases?
Those are diseases that can be transferred to other people.
When we speak of God communicable perfections, we are talking about those perfections that can be transferred to His creature.
By contrast, an incommunicable perfect is one that cannot be transferred.
God’s incommunicable perfections; therefore, cannot be perfections of human beings.
There are certain attributes that God cannot pass on to His creation.
For example, some have asked if God could create another god, and the answer is no.
Because if God were to create another god, the result would be a creature, which by definition, would lack the necessary perfections that describe God, such as independence, eternality, and immutability.
Now, God’s attributes define one another.
For example, we say that God is holy, just, immutable, and omnipotent, but His omnipotence is always a holy omnipotence, a just omnipotence, and an immutable omnipotence.
By the same token, God’s eternality us an omnipotent eternality, and His holiness is an omnipotent holiness.
He is NOT one part holy, another part omnipotence, and another part immutability.
He is altogether holy, altogether omnipotent, and altogether immutable.
The distinction between God’s communicable and incommunicable attributes is important because it helps us come to a clear understanding of the difference between God and any creature. No creature can ever possess an incommunicable attribute of almighty God.
For example, we would say that God’s incommunicable attributes, those that cannot be passed on to His creature, of God are:
Omnipotence. omnipresence, omniscience, immutability, aseity (His Independence), eternality.
We would say that God’s communicable attributes, those that can be passed on to His creature, of God are:
Holiness, Love, Goodness, Justice, Righteousness, and Wisdom.
The supreme difference between God and man is that God has no dependence upon anything outside of Himself, but man is totally dependent of God.
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
The classic cosmological argument for the existence of God holds that every effect must have a cause, the ultimate cause is God Himself.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) wrote an essay in which he said that everything has to have a cause, then God had to have a cause, so to carry the argument all the way through, we cannot stop with God but we have to ask who caused God.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was convinced by the cosmological argument until he read Mills’ essay and was an epiphany for Russell, and he used it in his book, “Why I am not a Christian.”
However, Mill’s “insight” is faulty because it is based on a false understanding of the law of causality.
This law affirms that every effect must have a cause, not that everything that IS must have a cause.
The only thing that requires a cause is an effect, and an effect requires a cause by definition because that is what an effect is, something caused by something else.
But God does not need a cause He is the cause within Himself; He is eternal and self-existent.
And because God is self-existent, He is the cause of His immutability.
I. The Meaning of Immutability
I. The Meaning of Immutability
Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Bible Doctrine 2. Unchangeableness
God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.5 This attribute of God is also called God’s immutability.
God’s acts are “actus purus,” which means that there are no potentialities with God; God is complete and perfect in himself from eternity to eternity.
God has no potential that is not already fully realized.
Meaning this, God does not have the potential of being more infinite than He is now.
It is not that He will be more loving tomorrow than He is today.
It is absolutely impossible for God to love more than He does now, because He loves with an absolute love of perfection and any change to that love would be a decline in love.
He is the absolute sum of perfection in all that He is and nothing can be added to what He is.
There is literally nothing for God to become.
We might change for better or worse, but for a perfect God, any change would only yield imperfect.
Louis Berkhof stated:
Systematic Theology B. The Immutability of God
But in God, as the absolute Perfection, improvement and deterioration are both equally impossible.
Charles Hodge said:
Systematic Theology § 7. Immutability
Infinite space and infinite duration cannot change.
Now, there is always an apparent tension concerning the immutability of God when you read passage that speak about God repenting.
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Or passages that speak about God changing His purpose.
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
Or passages that speak about God getting angry.
And when the people complained, it displeased the LORD: and the LORD heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the LORD burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp.
One of the ways that people have gone about to try and resolve this apparent tension is to answer the tension with the theology known as “Open Theism.”
The Open Theists will say that God really does change His mind, purposes, and promises in response to what to humans do.
According to the open theist, God does not change His mind because there had never been a decision made because God really does not really know what choices that mankind will make.
God is ever learning, they say.
He is more God today than yesterday because He knows more and He will be more God tomorrow than today because He will know more tomorrow.
The error of open theism and any other attempt to deny God’s immutability is answered by viewing God’s immutability in the proper biblical perspective.
What needs to be understood is that God always reveals Himself in relation to his people.
Anytime that we see the language in the Scripture of God “repenting” or “changing” it is language that is being used to communicate to man on his level of understanding about changes in disposition and actions.
God’s perceived “changes” are always in the context of His eternal omniscience and will, so they are never because God is surprised and has to adjust.
All perceived “changes” are eternally foreknown and predetermined.
We can say that God is immutable even with some of the language that the Bible uses, because unlike us, even His change is His dealing with mankind were predetermined and foreknown by Him, so their is no “change” as we would define the change because is never caught off guard or has to regroup and make a new plan because of the actions of His creation.
II. The Manifestation of Immutability
II. The Manifestation of Immutability
Scripture clearly teaches that God changes creaturely reality but is not Himself changed.
Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:
But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.
For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way 1. Scriptural Support
In Scripture, the virtue in God’s changelessness lies in the assurance that God is reliable in his promises—not only because he wills to be faithful to his word but because he cannot change his eternal counsels, regardless of what creatures do
For the king trusteth in the LORD, and through the mercy of the most High he shall not be moved.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck stated:
Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Bible Doctrine a. Evidence in Scripture
The doctrine of God’s immutability is of the highest significance for religion. The contrast between being and becoming marks the difference between the Creator and the creature. Every creature is continually becoming. It is changeable, constantly striving, seeks rest and satisfaction, and finds this rest in God, in him alone, for only he is pure being and no becoming. Hence, in Scripture God is often called the Rock.…
The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.
According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:
Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.
III. The Material of Immutability
III. The Material of Immutability
Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:
That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:
There are two things in which God will never change; His person and the covenant that He has made with His people.
But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me.
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment;
Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last.
Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.
We have absolute assurance that because God is changeless, His love and covenant with me is also changeless.
The best proof of the perseverance of the saints is in the fact that the one who started this will not change and will continue it.
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:
Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.
Because God is unchanging, He is in absolute perfection and all His thoughts and affections towards me are of absolute perfection.